The purpose of this is to follow a somewhat standard and normalized playthrough for use with certain Final Fantasy VI communities to compare and contrast how some characters in the Advance version of Final Fantasy VI (FF6A) fare in battle in relation to each other over the course of the game using a general baseline.

The criteria list for this type of playthrough is as follows:

1. Main 4 characters (use them whenever possible, with the exception of Shadow at Kohlingen due to the acknowledged grave disadvantages of using him during that scenario)
2. Minimize grinding (to conform the experience gained in the playthrough to the natural structure of the game)
3. Minimize running from battle (to keep experience at a baseline level)
4. No TASing or speed running (not too fast - or too slow)
5. No specific challenges undertaken (no single character challenge or low level game, etc.)
6. No bug exploits (luck manipulation, etc.)
7. Go for most chests, especially key ones, but don't bother if a few chests are missed (stay within a malleable range of chest contents acquired)
8. Use somewhat optimal character equipment setups (a larger range has to be allowed for here since there are many disagreements on what set ups are best at any given time)
9. Use a reasonable level of past knowledge to go through areas and battles but nothing on the level of looking at a FAQ while playing
10. Place priority on learning useful spells over gaining the stat bonuses espers offer until the characters have most useful spells
11. Focus mainly on one stat for each character with intentionally acquired esper bonuses (either Magic or Strength, depending on what is viewed as optimal for that character; Stamina, HP and MP bonuses are generally negligible)
12. Follow a World of Ruin dungeon order that prioritizes getting back the main party members first, then prioritizes following a dungeon order that goes through the easier and lower level World of Ruin dungeons and builds up to the harder and higher level ones.
13. When chests will later transform into other items, use discretion about whether to get them immediately or later, depending on the influence the item will have on the playthrough.
14. Try to minimize obvious errors when those errors will make significant differences in apparent character strength.

This specific playthrough will main Terra, Sabin, Mog, and Shadow (thus they are for the most part the only ones who can be compared in this playthrough, although other characters can still be compared early on until they fall behind in experience).

Notes:

-This uses a slightly modified version of FF6A that restores some features of the game's old translation (a few text bugs are still present) and uses a sound restoration modification to improve the music quality. Because the underlying battle system is unchanged, however, it is still applicable to the regular version of FF6A.

-The bugs left are some misalignment of text during a few character intros, most problematically Shadow's; a minor spacing error in some Cyan dialogue in Doma; Auction House items still use the original names; and an inconsistency in the naming of Midgardsormr and Aura Cannon still present.

-There's a bit of jitter on some battle dialog drawing and in some cases regular dialog drawing in the lower quality "derived" versions of the videos (the MPEG-4 and OGV ones) that isn't on the higher quality version, but this shouldn't impact them too much overall as long as one reads dialog in battle speedily.

-The vocalized lyrics of the opera are a bit out of sync with the onscreen text display in places. This is not due to a problem with audio syncing in the video itself, but is present while actually playing the game as well. It is due to the sound restoration modification's creator choosing to use streamed orchestral audio for the opera (with actual vocalists rather than the synth voices) instead of just rearranging the existing synth songs to sound like the SNES version in this case. Apparently there were some differences in timing in these streamed versions compared to the original SNES opera's timing.

-For the sake of clarity, the Growth Egg, Moogle Charm, and the Ward Bangle aren't used because they'd throw off the baseline levels, either for one specific character or all of them in relation to what point in the game the player is at.

-One Ragnarok is stolen from the final battle for use in the Advance endgame dungeon and the Soul Shrine. Any more would likely just be "grinding" for Ragnaroks, and only one character in the main party can equip a Ragnarok (Terra).

-The Cactaur magicite is put off until after Kefka's Tower because the battles required to get it might skew the rough applicability of this playthrough to the SNES version a little bit magic AP-wise. Although the evade bug being fixed does that a bit as well in specific situations earlier, that can't be helped and would have to be taken into account by someone analyzing the situation. Because the game specifically tells you to fight these battles to acquire bonus content in the Advance version, they aren't necessarily viewed as grinding since the battles aren't at the player's discretion and are part of the structure of the game's bonus content.

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